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Instagram and Tumblr are full of awesome inspirational camping/trekking hipster photos; so many awesome images of mountains, lakes, fields, manly men in beards and flannel, and adventurous women standing triumphant in their backpacks overlooking some wondrous sunset. It’s easy to forget that amping is actually hard work. While I spent much of yesterday morning in utter awe of how much better…

You want to go backpacking but you don’t want to spend a fortune on some fancy freeze dried feast from MEC or REI; welcome to the club. Here’s what we had last night while out in the farthest reaches of nowhere*: Basil & Oregano Gnocchi (Potato Dumplings) One pound of dry gnocchi 1 TBSP dried basil 1 TBSP dried oregano…

Crumpets; the mid-afternoon-snack of English aristocrats and the world’s deadliest thirteen year old. Due in no small part to the subliminal advertising efforts of the crumpet-lobby we picked up a pack of crumpets recently. Man, they were tasty. The following week I was sent on a pre-breakfast grocery run to get eggs. I was this close to coming home with another package of crumpets. The…

When I was a kid I hated porridge, oatmeal, cream of wheat, and all the other boiled grain goops I had to eat. Because it is cheap and easy to prepare at work, I’ve grown to appreciate Quaker flavoured instants oatmeals (but even then, it is fuel, not a meal to indulge in). It is my belief that if a food…

Nothing food related here, just a rant. When did advertising start glorifying the loser? I’m not going to claim the good old days had better commercials. I grew up with Bill Cosby shilling Jell-O. Advertising has always sucked. But advertising used to be about making people want to be someone cooler than themselves. “Damn, that Marlboro man is bad-ass. I want to be…

For a recent potluck, I decided to be overly ambitious and try making baklava. I’d had a recipe* floating around that I kept eyeing and finally decided to give it a try – and it was absolutely worth the effort. The hard part (in reality more time-consuming than hard) is the phyllo pastry. Keeping it damp and not ripping it proved…

One question I’ve been asked several times recently is how long we plan on doing our vegetable delivery. Matt and I have discussed this and we decided that we will continue over the winter until we get a delivery that we just feel wasn’t worth the money. From what we understand, the place we get ours from will continue delivering…

I was never a fan of home-style mac & cheese growing up. It always tasted floury to me. This one solves that problem, and adds some kick if you like that sort of thing. I grew up in a margarine house, so I rarely use butter, but this is a recipe that really wants butter instead of margarine. Makes 4-6…

As Cynthia mentioned previously, one of the meals we particularly enjoyed in Scotland was a roast parsnip soup. Shortly after our return, I made my first attempt at a parsnip and butternut squash soup. While not bad, I consider this a work in progress. Ingredients 2 Parsnips 1 Butternut Squash 1 large onion 1 head garlic 1 cup milk 1…

When I last talked about our Coffee, I mentioned that we were going to try it with dark honey in the future. In August we picked up a jar of really dark buckwheat honey at the local farmer’s market. It tastes like honey mixed with molasses (which I was not expecting). Cynthia loves it. I’m not as impressed (although it continues to…